Letters to Loved Ones EP

Archive for the ‘Conducting’ Category

I’ve had a pretty good week on the choir front. Sandymount Gospel Choir were shortlisted for Lyric FM‘s Choirs for Christmas competition, with our version of Light of the Stable by Emmylou Harris airing on Niall Carroll’s show on Wednesday 10th December.

We had a cracking concert with Portmarnock Singers on Sunday 10th in St. Anne’s Church in Portmarnock, the culmination of a tough season’s rehearsing. And the Waltons Sing Your Heart Out Choir gave their end of term concert last Thursday 4th, also a great success (that’s them in the rather dark photograph below…….luckily I’m much better at conducting choirs than at taking photos of them!) Meanwhile in The Gospel Project we had the somewhat unusual experience last Friday 5th December of performing in a warehouse in West Dublin…..have we had a career change, I hear you ask? Well, no, but it was certainly a little different to our usual weddings & functions; a retirement send-off for two obviously very popular figures in Kefron, both stepping down after having established the company and given it lifelong service. We sang a (somewhat altered!) version of Aloe Blac’s The Man in honour of Tom & Mick.

The period from September-Christmas can be a bit frantic for choir directors, and I’ll admit that this year in particular it was taking its toll on my energies during the rehearsal period, but as a choir member said to me this week, ‘it’s reward time now’. It’s all paid off. A good term’s work.

I’ve been re-evaluating some of my rehearsal strategies this week. Four and sometimes five nights each week I run rehearsals with different choirs and vocal harmony groups, but it’s quite important for me to remember that it’s not a ‘one size fits all’ type thing. Far from it. Every ensemble has its own culture and work ethic, and of course some of the groups I work with are professional and some non-professional. The Gospel Project is a group comprised of professional singers, and I’m accustomed to being able to walk in to rehearsal, throw some complex harmonies at them and have the singers reproduce them pretty quickly. Another group I work with are highly committed amateurs and again are able to learn parts relatively quickly, or at least put in a lot of private practise time outside of weekly rehearsals. I have to be careful that this doesn’t lead to unrealistic expectations on my part when it comes to some of the other groups I work with; one is a group of complete beginners for whom the world of singing harmony is quite new and naturally they learn more slowly. Another group again is happy to show up and sing whatever can be managed in rehearsals but there is no culture there of individual practise outside that time. This is further complicated by the fact that many people regard singing as something you can either do or you can’t, and consequently don’t respect the idea of practising it.

It leads to some interesting questions regarding the role of the musical director; should you always attempt to push an ensemble to newer and more ambitious goals? In a recreational – as opposed to professional – singing environment is the optimal goal always a great performance, or is the process of learning and rehearsing just as important? If the choir are quite happy with things the way they are, do I have the right to insist that they should be doing better? Reaching for higher standards enhances the experience for some singers and has the very opposite effect as far as some others are concerned, so this is not an easy thing to get right. There’s also the matter of how I fit into it as a professional musician with high standards – the choir’s standard is a reflection on me, but they are my employers, so shouldn’t I serve their needs rather than my ambition? Who am I really doing it for when I demand more of the choir?

What a week. I’m used to running around a lot but these past few days were extreme even for me. Teaching, gigging, rehearsing Portmarnock Singers, The Gospel Project, Sandymount Gospel Choir, squeezing in a few committee meetings in between and, sadly, singing at a funeral on Thursday morning. And travelling from one of those things to the other. (The thing nobody warns you about when it comes to being self-employed is how much time you will spend just getting from one professional appointment to another – in Dublin traffic this is no joke! I sometimes envy people who go to work in the same place every day. Especially when I’m on the way to weddings in hard-to-find country churches……)

Highlights of the week for me:

1). Being introduced to a cracking Karl Jenkins piece, Adiemus, which I’m going to be doing with Portmarnock Singers:

Can’t wait to get stuck in to this in rehearsal on Monday.

2). A very positive rehearsal on Tuesday with Sandymount Gospel Choir. As with many other areas of life, September is the time when choirs kick off again after the summer and new people often come on board – happily we’ve got a good few new choir members and, more importantly, they’re fitting in well and bringing new energy to the ensemble.

3). I discovered the existence of this organisation – the Wedding Band Association. This is a long overdue initiative proposing a kind of Code of Practice for the wedding band industry in Ireland. I take my hat off to these guys; musicians tend not to be too wonderful about organising ourselves but this is a positive exception. Self-regulation. A great opportunity for honest, hard-working wedding bands.

I’ve just learned this week that I’ve been appointed to the post of Musical Director with the Portmarnock Singers, a well-known choir in North Dublin. Looking forward to starting with them in September. Always good to have a new project to work on!